This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter). Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon

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December 2006
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DVD: The Usual Suspects

Yesterday I considered commenting some on the Saddam Execution but my heart just isn’t in it. So I’ll just leave that be and comment on one more DVD. This will be the 13th and probably last DVD of 2006 for me. (Not counting repeats, there was one DVD I watched on my own earlier in the year then watched again with Brandy recently, but it only gets counted and posted once.) So I averaged about 1.1 DVDs a month. I probably need to step that speed up a bit for that Netflix membership to be worth it. Oh well.

In any case, The Usual Suspects… For the first part of the movie I was a little bit bored, and I will admit, a bit confused as well. The characters all merged together in my mind. I wasn’t sure what was present and what was flashback. It was all a bit of a muddle. But my head got wrapped around things about midway, and I began to just enjoy it. And it was fun. The confusion was intentional of course. You’re supposed to gradually get revealed what is going on, up until the very end.

Basically, I watched this movie because back at Merrill Lynch, a coworker of mine used Keyser Söze as an IM screen name. I had no idea what it was other than it had to do with this movie. Years later, I finally now know “Who is Keyser Söze?”. So my cultural knowledge is complete. Well… OK, maybe not quite. :-)

No Attention for Silent Cal

I was looking at various US Presidents on Wikipedia. I note that every President from Herbert Hoover to George W Bush had their pages edited on 28 Dec 2006 (UTC).

Going back from the present, Calvin Coolidge is the most recent president with no edits on the 28th.

Poor Silent Cal.

(I do note however that in the last week, he did get 8 edits, so that is something at least.)

DVD: Gotcha!

So early Tuesday (UTC) we watched Gotcha! which is apperantly one of Brandy’s favorite films, although she hadn’t seen it in about a decade. The main character in this was played by Anthony Edwards who by coinicence was the husband in the last movie we watched earlier in the weekend. He was much younger and had hair in this movie though.

It was a fun little movie. I don’t think it has leapt to the “favorite movie” type status for me like it is on Brandy’s list, but it was fun as long as you didn’t think about it all that much. College kid has some spy adventures, and in the end the little games he plays on campus give him skills he needs to help foil the bad guys.

It is a cute little movie. Worth watching. We watched it on a laptop though. Probably should have watched it on the projector. BUt Amy was busy using that to watch something else. Anyway, fun little movie.

DVD: The Forgotten

Over the weekend we watched Brandy’s current Netflix movie, The Forgotten. The summary and such is all at that link, so I won’t repeat it. We watched the extended version with alternate ending that the DVD provides. Then we went back and watched the original theatrical ending. Brandy and I both liked the alternate version better.

In any case, this (unlike Eragon) was a good movie and worth watching. I would recommend a rental. Basically a light action/suspense flick that has some emotional tension in it. Nothing earth shattering, but a good movie for a rainy weekend. It was fun. The people ran around. There was suspense. There was an X-Files type theme. It worked.

We particularly liked the people getting sucked into the sky. That was cool.

Can’t Escape the Swirlies

As of early on the 25th (UTC).

Blue Trees, Smiling at Me

Nothing but Blue Trees, Do I See!

Memorial

Cinema: Eragon

After Amy’s last concert last weekend we decided to go to a movie. I knew Eragon had just come out, and was thinking “dragon movie, cool”. We were coming from Everett, so the first thought was to go to the nice movie theater in downtown Bellevue on the way home. But once we turned off the highway I quickly realized this was a mistake. The traffic was horrible and there were hordes of people doing Christmas shopping. I started to get a little wigged out by all the unexpected masses of people. (I’m fine in Manhattan and such, cause it is expected, but here I was thinking a nice quiet afternoon movie, and that was not what was happening, so I wanted to go elsewhere.)

So we ended up going to a movie theater closer to home, but not as nice, and not quite as crouded. Then they started the previews several minutes early. I had timed a trip to the bathroom to make it back just in time. It was just the commercials at the beginning, they hadn’t even gotten to the first actual preview yet. But it annoyed me. If you say you are going to start at a certain time, you need to start at that time.

Then it went downhill from there. The actual movie started with a narrator giving an overview of the history leading up to the start of the movie. During that Amy started talking about one of the actresses and some movie she had been in before, so I missed some of the narration. By this time I was already in a bad mood, so I decided I didn’t want to see the movie any more, cause I’d missed about 15 seconds of the intro. But Brandy wouldn’t let me leave. Then there were several other distracting episodes too, but by that time I was just mad, and not really thinking about the movie any more.

Meanwhile, it didn’t help that the movie itself was really really bad. Bad dialog. Bad acting. Obvious rip offs of other movies. (Although from my understanding, although I have not read it, this is true of the book too.) You never got to caring about any of the characters at all. And I dare say, even if I hadn’t already been in a bad mood ready to trash it even if it was the best movie of the century, I still would have thought it was bad. The dragon… I didn’t like her voice at all. Didn’t match. Didn’t work for me.

Anyway, if it is still in the theaters, definately don’t waste any cash on Eragon. Maybe wait for DVD if you are really bored one night and have nothing else to do.

OK, maybe that is all a BIT harsh, I was in a really bad pissy mood at the time I saw the movie. So maybe it actually was a good movie. But I’m thinking no.

Concerts

Last weekend and the weekend before, Amy had concerts. They both went well. There was supposed to be another concert in between, but Amy was sick for that one, so didn’t go.

There are no concerts this weekend. No more practices either until January.

Amy is having a sleepover at a friend’s house instead.

TSO

A little over two weeks ago we went to a Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert. It was a blast. I had a lot of fun. The first half got a little slow at times, but the second half just kept cranking. If you happen to be in the mood for a Rock / Classical / Christmas fusion combined with a kick ass light show, then you definately should check out a TSO concert. They put on a very good show. There are still shows left on their current tour including in New Jersey, Connecticut, and DC to name a few areas where I know I have blog readers.

Also, at the end the whole group sat outside at a table and stayed until everybody who wanted to meet them and get autographs and such had done so. It was late, and we were tired, but we waited in line and eventually Amy got to meet all of them and get a t-shirt and a program autographed by everybody. She was so excited.

It was a good night.